The invention generally relates to collections of information and to systems that include, and/or access, retrieve, display and/or otherwise perform operations involving, such information collections. In particular, the invention relates to information collections that include information that may change with time, and which maintain a status, state or other relationship of information in the collection with respect to time. For example, the information collections may store historical as well as current information in association with related temporal information. In preferred embodiments, the information collections comprise a body of law and store historical and current versions of the body of law and parts thereof.
The term “information collection” is used herein in a broad sense and, unless the context indicates otherwise, encompasses databases, information bases, knowledge bases, bodies of information, etc., stored on a computer readable medium (electronic, magnetic, optical, etc.) or otherwise accessible by a computer device. Similarly “information” is used herein in a broad sense and, unless the context indicates otherwise, encompasses data. Unless the context indicates otherwise, the terms “information” and “data” may be used herein interchangeably, and the terms “information collection,” “information base,” “knowledge base” and “database” may be used herein interchangeably. Similarly, the term “body of law” is used herein in a broad sense and encompasses bodies of law, codified and uncodified, such as codes, sets and codifications of laws, regulations, administrative rules, etc.
Some information collections include information that changes with time, and, in a sense, are dynamic. For example, a dictionary is a collection of words and their meanings; both the composition of the collection and the meanings of words in the collection may change over time. Frequently, words have multiple meanings in dictionaries and include historical information. Other examples are version control and configuration management systems that include historical and current versions of documents and software.
Still another example of an information collection that may change over time is a body of law, for example, promulgated by a governmental or quasi-governmental or other organization.
Such information collections may include historical information in the form of commentary, historical data, annotations, legislative history, references to other laws or judicial decisions, case notes, etc., as well as the current version of the body of law.
In the above examples, the subjects of the information collections can be rather large. To facilitate working (e.g., storing, accessing, retrieving, displaying, etc.) with an expansive subject, it is often necessary to provide some kind of organizational structure for the information. For some applications of a dynamic subject that may change over time, not only would an organizational structure be beneficial, but it would be useful to be able to track status or obtain the current state of parts of the subject, or to obtain historical information such as earlier versions of parts of the subject.
Bodies of law and/or parts thereof typically take effect on some date after enactment, and remain in effect until a specified expiration date, or indefinitely (or in perpetuity), unless altered or terminated by an intervening enactment. However, some bodies of law and/or parts thereof have retroactive effect from the date of enactment. In addition, at the time of enactment, a body of law or part thereof may have a duration that is not certain. For example, a body of law or part thereof becomes and/or ceases to be effective at some time triggered by an event that is not certain at the time that the body of law or part thereof was enacted. Possibly, such a body of law or part thereof might never actually go into effect if its initial effective conditions are not met. Likewise, a termination condition could fail to occur. It is also possible that a body of law or part thereof might be enacted with an effective date that, because of a subsequent enactment, may never take effect.
Therefore, ascertaining the status or state of any body of law or part thereof at any given time or interval of time can be difficult. Also, many bodies of law typically include one or more parts and/or sub-parts that may be modified independently of each other, which can compound any uncertainty or lack of clarity in the status or state of the parts and sub-parts.